Posts I've Made

I also did a ton of research on histamines and their effect on skin inflammations, and fermented foods are on the top list of things to avoid if there is a histamine sensitivity or high IgE.

I was going to mention this too. All fermented foods break me out badly, probably because of the histamine content.

But certain probiotic supplements have really helped my skin. I was taking Kirkman's acidophilus for awhile and that cleared me up a lot. Now I am taking Enzymedica Pro-Bio and it's working well too. This one is improving my digestion more than the plain acidophilus supplement.

I have to avoid bifidobacteria, FOS, and inulin in probiotic supplements. Those ingredients break me out.

The omega 3-6-9 supplement might be breaking you out. We usually get plenty of omega 6 from our diets and don't need to supplement. And the oils typically used in these types of supplements can cause breakouts for other reasons.They're often rancid, and some of them like flax oil can mess with your hormones. I'd ditch that supp and see if your skin improves. Then add fish oil or cod liver oil for omega 3s, and see if you tolerate that.

I'm very skeptical about a low fat, high carb diet being helpful for a yeast overgrowth. Even if the sugars are being digested and absorbed quickly, they are still in the digestive tract for awhile, where they will feed microorganisms. But it is interesting that this diet seems to have worked for this woman.

I will say that I don't think a VERY low or no carb diet is the best answer either, and it may even make a fungal overgrowth worse.

This is from an article on the "Perfect Health Diet" website. This guy promotes a paleo-like diet, but one that is not too low in carbs...

Another Low-Carb Risk: Impaired Immunity

Low-carb diets generally improve immunity to bacteria and viruses, but not all is roses and gingerbread.

Low-carb diets, alas, impair immunity to fungal and protozoal infections. The immune defense against these infections is glucose-dependent (as it relies on production of reactive oxygen species using glucose) and thyroid hormone-dependent (as thyroid hormone drives not only glucose availability, but also the availability of iodine for the myeloperoxidase pathway). Thus, anti-fungal immunity is downregulated on very low-carb diets.

Moreover, eukaryotic pathogens such as fungi and protozoa can metabolize ketones. Thus, a ketogenic diet promotes growth and systemic invasion of these pathogens.

As the fungal infection case studies on our “Results” page illustrate, low-carb dieters often develop fungal infections, and these often go away with increased starch consumption.

Another issue is that mucus is essential for immunity at epithelial surfaces, and glycosylation is essential for the integrity of cellular junctions and tissue barriers such as the intestinal and blood-brain barriers. Thus, reduced production of mucus can impair intestinal immunity and promote gut dysbiosis or systemic infection by pathogens that enter through the gut.

Finally, a very low-carb diet is not entirely free of risks of gut dysbiosis, and not just from fungal infections. Bacteria can metabolize the amino acid glutamine as well as mucosal sugars, so it is not possible to completely starve gut bacteria with a low-carb diet. Nor is it desirable, as this would eliminate a protective layer against systemic infection by pathogens that enter the body through the gut. As our “Results” page shows, several people who had gut trouble on the very low-carb (and generally excellent) GAPS diet were cured on our diet.

Also... since both good and bad bacteria thrive on carbs, I wonder if eating very low carb might kill off too much good bacteria, which are needed to keep yeast in check. I guess if you take probiotics this may be less of an issue.